Rise in number of people smuggled into UK in trucks

THE number of migrants smuggled into the UK in containers and lorries has risen in the past year, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

A spokesman said the body would be working with police and immigration officers on the investigation into the people found dead in Essex.

He said the NCA would provide specialist support to “urgently identify and take action against any organised crime groups that have played a role in causing these deaths”.

In May the body said there had been “increasing use of higher risk methods of clandestine entry” to the UK by organised crime gangs who move people across borders illegally.

Its annual national strategic assessment report said: “These include the movement of migrants, including children, in containers, refrigerated HGVs and small boats, at a high risk to life of those migrants smuggled.”

In a separate annual report for 2018-19, it said the “majority of clandestine attempts involve concealments in HGV and other vehicles from Calais, Zeebrugge or through the Eurotunnel”.

The NCA warned in April that crime gangs were attempting to smuggle migrants into the UK at less busy ports after a clampdown in security at major ones.

The multimillion-pound Project Invigor was launched in 2017 to tackle high-risk people smuggling. It has been trying to gather intelligence in eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as countries which migrants would be passed through en route to their final destination, the aim being to disrupt organised crime gangs.

A document setting out the parameters of the programme — which is led by the NCA, working with the Home Office, Border Force, police, Crown Prosecution Service and EU law enforcement and is expected to run until 2020 — said migrant smuggling was a “multi-national business”. The organised crime groups involved come from all over the world and make “billions of dollars per year”.

The exact scale of the problem is unknown and the NCA has yet to publish statistics on most of its work in this area.

However, it has said the number of potential victims of human trafficking and modern slavery reported to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) continues to rise. Last year, for example, there were 6,993 cases — a 36% increase on 2017.

The NRM programme was set up to identify and support victims. It includes those who came to the UK as a result of people smuggling, although investigators believe they may account for a small percentage of the total.

The figures may be able to give some idea of the scale of the problem, but they are not specific to people smuggling.